The Fellowship grants each Fellow a one-year $20,000 stipend to support her or his research and writing which may focus on American politics, public policy, foreign policy, or the impact of global affairs on the United States. Along with the fellowship grant, the Miller Center helps the fellow choose a senior scholar who serves as a "Dream Mentor" throughout the fellowship year. [Clara’s Dream Mentor is Mary Dudziak!]

Over the years I’ve been impressed by how well the program, the brainchild of Brian Balogh and executed by him and others at the University of Virginia (including Melvyn Leffler and Sidney Milkis) to sustain novice scholars of American Political Development tradition as they seek to acquire places in history, political science, and other academic departments. In 2007-08, I mentored Jefferson Decker, who was then a doctoral candidate in history at Columbia University. Subsequently he was an ACLS/Mellon New Faculty Fellow at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and has just been appointed an Assistant Professor of American Studies there. His book-in-progress is “The Other Rights Revolution: Conservative Lawyers and the Remaking of American Government.”

Last week I became (in the Miller Center's argot) a “recidivist” by appearing at the National Fellowship Spring Conference alongside my second fellow, Jack Epstein, who is ABD in history at Ohio University. His project is “Behind the Menacing Racket: Organized Labor, Federal Anti-Racketeering Policy, and the Law and Order Origins of the Modern American State, 1927–1970.”